The Crown of Wild Olive
and I wish any of us knew what a time crystallisation takes, for that is
consummately fine packing. The particles of the rock are thrown down,
just as Isabel brings her things--in a heap; and innumerable Lilies, not
of the valley, but of the rock, come to pack them. But it takes such a
time!
However, the best--out and out the best--way of understanding the thing,
is to crystallise yourselves.
THE AUDIENCE. Ourselves!
L. Yes; not merely as you did the other day, carelessly, on the
schoolroom forms; but carefully and finely, out in the playground. You
can play at crystallisation there as much as you please.
KATHLEEN _and_ JESSIE. Oh! how?--how?
L. First, you must put yourselves together, as close as you can, in the
middle of the grass, and form, for first practice any figure you like.
JESSIE. Any dancing figure, do you mean?
L. No; I mean a square, or a cross, or a diamond. Any figure you like,
standing close together. You had better outline it first on the turf,
with sticks, or pebbles, so as to see that it is rightly drawn; then get
into it and enlarge or diminish it at one side, till you are all quite
in it, and no empty space left.
DORA. Crinoline and all?
L. The crinoline may stand eventually for rough crystalline surface,
unless you pin it in; and then you may make a polished crystal of
yourselves.
LILY. Oh, we'll pin it in--we'll pin it in!
L. Then, when you are all in the figure, let every one note her place,
and who is next her on each side; and let the outsiders count how many
places they stand from the corners.
KATHLEEN. Yes, yes,--and then?
L. Then you must scatter all over the playground--right over it from
side to side, and end to end; and put yourselves all at equal distances
from each other, everywhere. You needn't mind doing it very accurately,
but so as to be nearly equidistant; not less than about three yards
apart from each other, on every side.
JESSIE. We can easily cut pieces of string of equal length, to hold. And
then?
L. Then, at a given signal, let everybody walk, at the same rate,
towards the outlined figure in the middle. You had better sing as you
walk; that will keep you in good time. And as you close in towards it,
let each take her place, and the next comers fit themselves in beside
the first ones, till you are all in the figure again.
KATHLEEN. Oh! how we shall run against each other! What fun it will be!
L. No, no, Miss Katie; I can't allow any running against each other. The
atoms never do that, whatever human creatures do. You must all know your
places, and find your way to them without jostling.
LILY. But how ever shall we do that?
ISABEL. Mustn't the ones in the middle be the nearest, and the outside
ones farther off--when we go away to scatter, I mean?
L. Yes; you must be very careful to keep your order; you will soon find
out how to do it; it is only like soldiers forming square, except that
each must stand still in her place as she reaches it, and the others
come round her; and you will have much more complicated figures,
afterwards, to form, than squares.
ISABEL. I'll put a stone at my place: then I shall know it.
L. You might each nail a bit of paper to the turf, at your place, with
your name upon it: but it would be of no use, for if you don't know your
places, you will make a fine piece of business of it, while you are
looking for your names. And, Isabel, if with a little head, and eyes,
and a brain (all of them very good and serviceable of their kind, as
such things go), you think you cannot know your place without a stone at
it, after examining it well,--how do you think each atom knows its
place, when it never was there before, and there's no stone at it?
ISABEL. But does every atom know its place?
L. How else could it get there?
MARY. Are they not attracted to their places?
L. Cover a piece of paper with spots, at equal intervals; and then
imagine any kind of attraction you choose, or any law of attraction, to
exist between the spots, and try how, on that permitted supposition, you
can attract them into the figure of a Maltese cross, in the middle of
the paper.
MARY (_having tried it_). Yes; I see that I cannot:--one would need all
kinds of attractions, in different ways, at different places. But you do
not mean that the atoms are alive?
L. What is it to be alive?
DORA. There now; you're going to be provoking, I know.
L. I do not see why it should be provoking to be asked what it is to be
alive. Do you think you don't know whether you are alive or not?
(ISABEL _skips to the end of the room and back._)
L. Yes, Isabel, that's all very fine; and you and I may call that being
alive: but a modern philosopher calls it being in a 'mode of motion.' It
requires a certain quantity of heat to take you to the sideboard; and
exactly the same quantity to bring you back again. That's all.
ISABEL. No, it isn't. And besides, I'm not hot.
L. I am, sometimes, at the way they talk. However, you know, Isabel, you
might have been a particle of a mineral, and yet have been carried round
the room, or anywhere else, by chemical forces, in the liveliest way.
ISABEL. Yes; but I wasn't carried: I carried myself.
L. The fact is, mousie, the difficulty is not so much to say what makes
a thing alive, as what makes it a Self. As soon as you are shut off from
the rest of the universe into a Self, you begin to be alive.
VIOLET (_indignant_). Oh, surely--surely that cannot be so. Is not all
the life of the soul in communion, not separation?
L. There can be no communion where there is no distinction. But we shall
be in an abyss of metaphysics presently, if we don't look out; and
besides, we must not be too grand, to-day, for the younger children.
We'll be grand, some day, by ourselves, if we must. (_The younger
children are not pleased, and prepare to remonstrate; but, knowing by
experience, that all conversations in which the word 'communion' occurs,
are unintelligible, think better of it._) Meantime, for broad answer
about the atoms. I do not think we should use the word 'life,' of any
energy which does not belong to a given form. A seed, or an egg, or a
young animal are properly called 'alive' with respect to the force
belonging to those forms, which consistently develops that form, and no
other. But the force which crystallises a mineral appears to be chiefly
external, and it does not produce an entirely determinate and individual
form, limited in size, but only an aggregation, in which some limiting
laws must be observed.
MARY. But I do not see much difference, that way, between a crystal and
a tree.
L. Add, then, that the mode of the energy in a living thing implies a
continual change in its elements; and a period for its end. So you may
define life by its attached negative, death; and still more by its
attached positive, birth. But I won't be plagued any more about this,
just now; if you choose to think the crystals alive, do, and welcome.
Rocks have always been called 'living' in their native place.
MARY. There's one question more; then I've done.
L. Only one?
MARY. Only one.
L. But if it is answered, won't it turn into two?
MARY. No; I think it will remain single, and be comfortable.
L. Let me hear it.
MARY. You know, we are to crystallise ourselves out of the whole
playground. Now, what playground have the minerals? Where are they
scattered before they are crystallised; and where are the crystals
generally made?
L. That sounds to me more like three questions than one, Mary. If it is
only one, it is a wide one.
MARY. I did not say anything about the width of it.
L. Well, I must keep it within the best compass I can. When rocks either
dry from a moist state, or cool from a heated state, they necessarily
alter in bulk; and cracks, or open spaces, form in them in all
directions. These cracks must be filled up with solid matter, or the
rock would eventually become a ruinous heap. So, sometimes by water,
sometimes by vapour, sometimes nobody knows how, crystallisable matter
is brought from somewhere, and fastens itself in these open spaces, so
as to bind the rock together again, with crystal cement. A vast quantity
of hollows are formed in lavas by bubbles of gas, just as the holes are
left in bread well baked. In process of time these cavities are
generally filled with various crystals.
MARY. But where does the crystallising substance come from?
L. Sometimes out of the rock itself; sometimes from below or above,
through the veins. The entire substance of the contracting rock may be
filled with liquid, pressed into it so as to fill every pore;--or with
mineral vapour;--or it may be so charged at one place, and empty at
another. There's no end to the 'may be's.' But all that you need fancy,
for our present purpose, is that hollows in the rocks, like the caves in
Derbyshire, are traversed by liquids or vapour containing certain
elements in a more or less free or separate state, which crystallise on
the cave walls.
SIBYL. There now;--Mary has had all her questions answered: it's my turn
to have mine.
L. Ah, there's a conspiracy among you, I see. I might have guessed as
much.
DORA. I'm sure you ask us questions enough! How can you have the heart,
when you dislike so to be asked them yourself?
L. My dear child, if people do not answer questions, it does not matter
how many they are asked, because they've no trouble with them. Now, when
I ask you questions, I never expect to be answered; but when you ask me,
you always do; and it's not fair.
DORA. Very well, we shall understand, next time.
SIBYL. No, but seriously, we all want to ask one thing more, quite
dreadfully.
L. And I don't want to be asked it, quite dreadfully; but you'll have
your own way, of course.
SIBYL. We none of us understand about the lower Pthah. It was not merely
yesterday; but in all we have read about him in Wilkinson, or in any
book, we cannot understand what the Egyptians put their god into that
ugly little deformed shape for.
L. Well, I'm glad it's that sort of question; because I can answer
anything I like, to that.
EGYPT. Anything you like will do quite well for us; we shall be pleased
with the answer, if you are.
L. I am not so sure of that, most gracious queen; for I must begin by
the statement that queens seem to have disliked all sorts of work, in
those days, as much as some queens dislike sewing to-day.
EGYPT. Now, it's too bad! and just when I was trying to say the
civillest thing I could!
L. But, Egypt, why did you tell me you disliked sewing so?
EGYPT. Did not I show you how the thread cuts my fingers? and I always
get cramp, somehow, in my neck, if I sew long.
L. Well, I suppose the Egyptian queens thought every body got cramp in
their neck, if they sewed long; and that thread always cut people's
fingers. At all events, every kind of manual labour was despised both by
them, and the Greeks; and, while they owned the real good and fruit of
it, they yet held it a degradation to all who practised it. Also,
knowing the laws of life thoroughly, they perceived that the special
practice necessary to bring any manual art to perfection strengthened
the body distortedly; one energy or member gaining at the expense of the
rest. They especially dreaded and despised any kind of work that had to
be done near fire: yet, feeling what they owed to it in metal-work, as
the basis of all other work, they expressed this mixed reverence and
scorn in the varied types of the lame Hephaestus, and the lower Pthah.
SIBYL. But what did you mean by making him say 'everything great I can
make small, and everything small great?'
L. I had my own separate meaning in that. We have seen in modern times
the power of the lower Pthah developed in a separate way, which no Greek